He keeps changing his tune, and it’s pretty obvious that Mitt doesn’t actually care about abortion — he’ll just do whatever the GOP tells him to. And that’s exactly why we should be worried. Take, for example, his pledge to reinstate the Global Gag Rule:
In the same interview in which Romney claimed abortion wasn’t on his legislative agenda, he also pledged to reinstate the “global gag rule”, a policy that cuts off US funding to any organization abroad that so much as mentions abortion as an option for women, provides abortions with its own non-US dollars or advocates for abortion rights. Laws preventing US money from paying for abortions abroad have been on the books since the 1970s; the gag rule is particularly pernicious because it goes significantly further than that and cuts funding to groups that are providing an array of crucial reproductive medical services in places where death from childbirth is routine. The gag rule was put in place by President Reagan, rescinded by Democratic presidents including Barack Obama and put back into place by Republican ones.
When the gag rule was in effect under George W Bush, global health leaders warned that it was contributing to “shockingly high” rates of death and disability in developing nations. Clinics that provided necessary maternal healthcare to some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable women were shut down. And the gag rule impeded access to healthcare services like pre-natal and well-baby care, children’s healthcare, HIV prevention and treatment, and even malaria services. It was a global health disaster, and it’s apparently one of the top abortion-related issues on Romney’s agenda.